Sioux City Fire Chief Tom Everett says he’s concerned about the impact on smaller departments in the wake of charges against the former state fire training manager for allegedly issuing improper certifications to thousands of firefighters. He says it could be a big problem for smaller rural departments, many who depend on volunteers. “Unfortunately I think it does give the fire service in Iowa a black eye,” Everett says. “I do think there are a lot of departments that depend on those certifications and depend on the training that they receive through the bureau. And unfortunately they are going to have to wait through how to fix what’s happened.”

He says Sioux City provides its own training, testing, and evaluation to all firefighters. He says they do have some firefighters who get certified through the state, but says the number of hours they train on the required subjects far exceeds the state standards for certification. He says each member of the Sioux City Department has hundreds of hours of local training. Everett says they train 31-thousand-455 hours, which gives each firefighter 289 hours of individual training each year.

Former State Fire Services Training Bureau certification manager John McPhee was arrested Tuesday on charges of misconduct in office and tampering with records. The Iowa Department of Public Safety revealed that the state bureau issued nearly 23-hundred improper certifications to one-thousand-706 firefighters and emergency personnel between 2012 and 2016.

(Radio Iowa)